Lorena Wiebes’ Giro d’Italia disqualification has brought the UCI’s weight limit into sharp relief – is the rule outdated?
The governing body’s rules look a bit silly whatever happened in Italy
There are few things that shock me in cycling. I have seen it all, from the controversies to the triumphs, and yet Lorena Wiebes’ disqualification from the Giro d’Italia Women on Saturday did exactly that – it shocked me. Disqualification or relegation are nothing new in the sport, of course, but to be kicked out of a race for having an underweight bike is novel. My colleagues at Cyclingnews reckon it last happened in 2013, also at the women’s Giro, which would be why I don’t remember it, given I was 17.
Hence the general astonishment at Wiebes' being disqualified not just from stage one of the Giro, which she had won, but also the rest of the race. This is unusual. Her agent, André Boskamp, told Wielerflits that “she was a complete mess” when she returned home to the Netherlands, while SD Worx-Protime team manager Erwin Janssen told the Dutch press that legal action was being explored. This is unlikely to be the last we have heard about this.
News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com - should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.
There are two separate parts to the oddity of Wiebes being disqualified because her bike was a little bit lighter than it should be; her team said it was only 20 grams, although this has not been confirmed. The first is the concerns that the bike was not weighed properly, as alleged by SD Worx-Protime. Clearly, if there were discrepancies between measurements as much as the team say – 50g between different readings – then it feels ridiculous that something as big as disqualification was levied. Also, given that it is such a big punishment, it feels like it’s the kind of thing that one should be absolutely certain on, and this feels a bit muddy.
We haven’t heard from the UCI on how the decision was reached, but with it being the same – or very similar – to the bike that Wiebes has won on eight times this season, it does feel like it should leave the governing body embarrassed as much as the rider and her team. The frame and all the components are approved by the UCI, they’ve been checked and OKed before, so why was it different on Saturday?
Wiebes’ Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL8 is not just ridden by her, but by her whole team, plus FDJ-Suez United and AG Insurance-Soudal on the Women’s WorldTour, plus Soudal Quick-Step and Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe on the men’s WorldTour. The components might be different, and there has been a suggestion that it might have been through Wiebes using a SRAM Red AXS 1x drivetrain instead of 2x that extra weight was lost. However, we don’t regularly see riders being kicked out of races for having light bikes.
Of course, if the bike was truly under 6.8kg, then Wiebes and her team can have no qualms about her being kicked out of the race, those are the rules. It’s moot whether the weight gave her an advantage or not. But that doesn’t mean that those rules are right.
26 years after the rule was introduced, there has been no update; it is a fixed point in the sand. It is also the same weight for both male and female pro riders, there is no flexibility here for lighter athletes, which is what women tend to be. Everyone has to aim for the same weight limit, no matter their frame size. It’s something Ashleigh Moolman Pasio called out in an article for BikeRadar last year, but this situation has thrown it under the spotlight again.
Riders using smaller frames often have to weigh down their bike to make it past the UCI’s arbitrary threshold, which was introduced to create a level playing field between teams, but has ended up penalising smaller riders.
Once again, it feels like the UCI is slow to adapt and change, which creates odd situations like this, when the fastest woman in the world is kicked out of a race over a rule that most think is outdated. Having already had to U-turn over gearing limits by SRAM, might we see the bike industry push back again?
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